I almost wish that my soul’s shadow had never left. I’d rather talk to an ageless semi-sentient parasite than myself. I often wonder if I killed it, and if I did, will it ever come back? It said we would suffer the consequences together, but I still haven’t figured out if that means I’ll suffer immortality while it suffers mortality, or something I’ve yet to discover.
In my desperation, I even tried to summon Kesbeel, chanting his name in my prison cell like a fucking lunatic. Absolutely nothing happened, of course. If the Power of Oaths heard me, he probably watched and laughed at my pathetic attempt.
I must be at least a week in by now. I wonder what happened to Israel. Is World War III raging on out there? Is my father okay? I haven’t written to him in months. God, I hope Jackie’s family isn’t worried sick about her, too. I don’t know why Malak went looking for her, but I know I had something to do with it. It’s my fault. She wouldn’t be a slave to a bunch of diabolical angels right now if I had just left her the hell alone.
I’ve decided I’m glad Michael’s dead. He’s evil and deserving of much worse.
I think I might wish Abaddon were dead, too.
Even if I can’t remember what all happened the night before we left the Abyss, mybodydoes. It knows. Itcan’tforget. Not when something terrible has happened to it.
From the very moment I agreed to our wedding, Abaddon made me feel what he wanted me to feel. All it took him was the slightest weakness in my armor to gain a foothold, and once he had it, his emotions overrode my own. My world revolved around him; there was no room for my own thoughts, my freedom of choice. I would have done anything he wanted me to do... and I did.
Except that wasn’t enough, because he didn’t stop there.
He couldn’t be satisfied with everything I had to give, so he took the rest for himself. He said so himself—we had sex many times.
There are only so many reasons I’d have no memory of it.
As much as I wish it weren’t true, as much as I desperatelywish I’m mistaken, I really don’t think I was conscious for a lot of it. At aminimum, I was not coherent enough to consent, and either way, he took advantage of me. The difference is only in the clarity of the line being crossed. It’s still… he…
Fuck, I can’t even say the word to myself.
I just hate him. I fuckinghate him.
“I trusted you,”I whisper into the dark cell, my voice breaking, tears streaming down my face. I’ve cried many times here by now, but this one feels like it wrenches my soul out of my body. My chest aches with the pain of the worst kind of betrayal. “How could you do that to me?How?”
I want to scream at him. I want him to hurt as much as I do.
“I trusted you.” I pull my knees into my chest, sobbing, shaking, rocking myself back and forth. “I trusted you, I trusted you,I TRUSTED YOU.”
How will I get over this? How am I ever supposed to trust someone again?
Ican’t.
I’m irrevocably broken.
I cry until there’s nothing left inside me, until I find myself staring at the blank wall.
The strangest thing happens, then.
A song starts growing in my head, one that I’ve never heard before, as if my despair manifested it. It’s a choir, harmonizing, vivid in my mind as if they were standing in front of me. It might be the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. It’s more precious than the first light of dawn, more hypnotic than the steady rhythm of the ocean’s tide.
The choir builds and builds to a crescendo, then suddenly silences, just for a deathly low bass to set a haunting, vibrating melody.
A soprano rises in a bone-chilling challenge,“Absinthium.”
The bass soon answers, his voice like a funeral song,“Amaritudovenit.”
They harmonize in a hum, a tangle of pain and joy. And then she rises, rises. Swelling with the call of a siren, the bass her echoing sailor. She reaches the impossible pitch of an angel, calling to the heavens, sending chills across my entire body.
Suddenly, they stop.
An unseen gate shatters.
And the Aether collapses into me.
It’s all I can see, feel. I’m flooded with more raw power than I know what to do with. Light shoots from pinpricks in my skin, quickly becoming ravenous, until my body can’t contain it anymore. A wave of power, the force of a star, explodes from within me.
